About Cannabis and Cancer

And then you got to adjust your sound

for this voice, I'll tell you that right now.

Sounds good.

My name is Michael Lent.

I am a 67 year old man, retired mechanic,

arbitration manager of automotive auctions.

I'm married, I have three children, and four grandchildren.

- My name is Charles Ray Mason, I go by Ray.

I met Eddie probably in 2016, 2017.

All of this happened in my search to address a new diagnosis

of multiple myeloma cancer.

My name's Eddie Funxta.

I was a all around neighborhood thug,

having fun, in the ghettos.

I wanted a way, an access out of it.

At the time, Proposition 215 came on the ballot,

and that's kind of been my entire drive since then.

I'm kind of a plant guy.

Cannabis is one of my very loving plants

that I've done a lot of work with.

All the seeds, all the plants, everything in general.

I'm pretty much a street botanist.

My name's Ken Olson.

I'm 41 years old.

I'm a father of four.

I do that as a team, now, actually with somebody else.

Not with my original partner.

A lot of cancer in my family.

A lot of cancer.

My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer

and my grandfather of colon cancer,

an aunt, lung cancer,

another aunt, brain cancer,

another aunt, breast cancer.

My brother had thyroid cancer.

My mother, she had ovarian cancer

that she was treated for

and she went through surgery and chemo.

I was a young teen mom.

I had a daughter at 14 years old

and I realized at that age

that if I smoked weed,

that my anxieties of being a mom

went away, and I was a better mom.

And I know that at that time, it was very taboo.

You're not even supposed to be smoking, period.

I honestly was struggling 'cause I had nobody

in my peer group to talk to.

Nobody had kids, it was me.

I started in the early 90s, around '91.

That was the first time I ever smoked a joint.

A friend of ours, some girl I liked,

I thought she was nice, pretty.

She pulled out a joint, I took a hit of it.

It didn't do really much to me.

A couple years later when I became a freshman

in high school, I hit a bong for the first time

and it really put me in a very unusual space

and I didn't know if I liked it or if I didn't.

I just knew that I took too much at the first time,

so I was kind of on the fence about it.

So I felt alone and smoking weed

put me in a place where I could actually calm myself down

and get on my child's level in such a way

I've never been able to do with anything.

And I was just honestly a better mom.

More in tune with her and had a great time.

I didn't have to take anything over the counter

or prescription wise that probably

would have damaged me.

I was a very bad kid in school.

I lived in the projects.

And so I was used to, I was totally against authority,

teachers, cops, everything.

One of my teachers was like, "Hey, Eddie,"

my history teacher, she was like,

"You seem like a good kid and I don't want

"you to fail this class.

"You've been failing all your classes for years

"and I think you have potential."

And she said, "If you go to the registrar's office

"and just do anything with any of the ballots.

"Get signatures, go door to door, make phone calls,

"I'll pass you in this class.

"You get a piece of paper."

I said, "Okay, cool."

So I go down to the registrar's office.

Medical marijuana, they needed signatures.

So I said, "Hey, I'll do this."

They said, "All right cool."

So they stood me up at my local grocery store

and I got signatures.

I was 17 years old.

The law passed, I passed my class.

You know, it was amazing.

I got a C in that class.

And so this whole wheel just started turning about

what this movement was.

First, it was a couple of friends of mine

getting cannabis cards and not getting in trouble

running around with a couple of pounds of weed.

And that made a lot of sense to me at the time.

I didn't feel like it was a bad thing.

In the projects where I was at,

people were selling crack cocaine,

people were selling heroin and methamphetamine

and those drugs were terribly ravaging the neighborhood

and causing huge disruptions in families.

My step-father was addicted to heroin,

slamming heroin with needles and stuff,

and so I was very, very immersed in

the terrible culture of drugs.

I wanted a way out,

and one thing I couldn't figure out was

how to get out.

We didn't many opportunities there.

The schools that we went to,

there's not a lot of counseling services

or any positive drives.

So I had these two influences in my face at school.

I had these people that were thuggish,

running rough, had no positive drive in their life.

And then I had these kids that were getting

tremendous support from their family

and going to college and learning things

and so I was never against, you know,

doing better in life, and so I started realizing like,

I used to tell my friends, like,

"Hey, you guys, you know you guys are selling weed

"and drugs and stuff to each other."

Nobody's ever gonna get better than

who you're getting your stuff from

and we're only selling stuff to each other

here in these projects.

We're only gonna live in the next project apartment over.

We're never gonna leave the projects.

We have to learn how to get money from

those people up there that have money every week,

they get a paycheck.

What drives them?

What influences them?

And not drugs, like can we do art,

can we make music?

I became a musician.

I was an artist for years.

And those people kind of directed me

and pulled me out of the projects

and they showed me other,

and I got to see other things.

Those people were still very much into cannabis.

And one of the things I was very successfully

blessed with was an access

to a very, very good quality cannabis.

When the medical cards came in,

I just felt like it was time to get one.

So I got one, and it was mostly just to protect me

from growing weed,

so that I can provide for my sons.

I started to meet patients,

started to meet people

and it made sense.

- I am an ER doctor who has segued into cannabis work.

And still work in the emergency department.

I work with patients with cannabis

only in the office at the relief institute,

here in Santa Monica, California.

So I started all of this about three or four years ago

when my two very close family members

were diagnosed with cancer.

Both of them were at different stages.

One had breast cancer and was young,

relatively young, a 40 year old woman.

And one was older in his 60s or 70s

and was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

Both of them were recommended by their physicians

to start using cannabis products.

Both their oncologists say,

"You should probably smoke pot, and it'll help."

And that was the end of the conversation.

And so when I went in and discussed all of this

with the oncologist, the same question kept coming up.

Well, what are they supposed to do?

How are they supposed to do it?

How often are they supposed to use it?

What is it good for?

What is it not good for?

What should we look out for?

You know, we don't want her to be high all day,

'cause she's got little kids around.

How do we do this better?

And what ended up happening,

which, in the know, happens for a lot of individuals

was we went into a "Pot Shop."

And talked to a Budtender

who sometimes gave us good advice

and sometimes didn't give us good advice.

So for the 40 year old female,

she did really well and kind of figured it out.

For the 70 year old male, he didn't.

And that was where I thought,